Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican's U.N. nuncio, said he was glad world leaders talk about human dignity in dialogues today about human rights, but he said they must recognize that such dignity begins at conception.

In a March 19 presentation at the United Nations, he said humans cannot be reduced to "the sum of their body parts, vital signs, or physical or intellectual attributes" and that human dignity is "not a scientific category but an ethical one."

Commonweal magazine has produced an excellent series of articles discussing contraception from three different points of view. I would like to comment on the first article in this blog post and perhaps explore the other two articles in a future blog post.

At the close of the first session of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family, Pope Francis beatified Pope Paul VI. That Francis moved the author of Humanae Vitae closer to sainthood at a synod on marriage and family should not inspire liberal optimism. But it has.